Where Will Wildlife Move in Changing Environments?

Submitted by admin on 9 February 2010 - 2:33pm

Principal Investigator(s):

Lauren Buckley, Michael Angilletta, Robert Holt, Joshua Tewksbury

Animals and plants are already shifting their distributions in response to changing climates. Yet, biologists are often unable to predict these shifts because their predictions rely on correlating species' current locations to environmental conditions. Animal and plant distributions often shift in unexpected ways as the species adapt their physiology, interact with other species, and are unable to move to desirable new locations. The working group will synthesize existing models that predict distributions directly from behavior, traits, physiology, and population dynamics. This bottom-up approach will enable the group to extend these models to account for physiological adaptation, species interactions, and dispersal limitations. The resulting models will better predict how species will respond to climate change and how invasive species may spread.